I'll Make Me a World

Genesis 1:1-2:4(a)

Trinity Sunday

June 15, 2014

William G. Carter

“I’m lonely. I’ll make me a world…” That’s how the Harlem poet James Weldon Johnson imagined the voice of God. He pictured a Creator who could do anything, a Divine Artist who took delight in every new project and said, “That’s good!” And yet for all God’s joy, there was still a hunger for relationship, to fashion creatures who have the capacity to know God and enjoy him forever. So here we are. That’s how our story with God begins.

The Bible begins at the beginning. Where we there to record it? No. What we have are a few accounts, all faithfully written and inscribed, as a guide for us to understand where we come from, and to teach us what kind of God is the Source of all things.

One of the accounts is Psalm 104, which we sang last Sunday. In Hebrew, there are seven stanzas, one for each day of creation. With creative wisdom, God makes an abundant world. All of it is found by the faithful as a gift. We didn’t make any of it, God did. The primary noun is “You” – You, You, You – “You ride on the wings of the wind, You make streams gush forth in the valleys, You bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the human heart.” Everything comes from the joyful heart of God. In one of his Narnia books, C. S. Lewis imagined that God sang everything into being. I like that; I believe it to be true.

Another account of Creation comes in the second chapter of Genesis. This story portrays God as close at hand, able to walk in the garden on two feet. God creates everything “in a single day.” In a single day! Genesis 2 says, “In the day that the Lord God created the heavens and earth…” It must have been some day, not that the Eternal God ever wears a wristwatch. God is free to define “a single day” however God chooses. No human begin was present to see God punch the time clock.

This second account declares that the earth creature “Adam” is created from the dirt and given the job of taking care of the garden. If you came to church today with potting soil under your fingernails, you know this is noble work. And it seems Adam was only the rough draft for Eve; as a second earth creature, she is created as helper and partner, the two of them to live in harmony without shame. As you know, that’s just the beginning of the story. Adam and Eve mess up the Garden, and their children don’t turn out so well either.

As the Jewish sage Elie Wiesel said about this second story, “God created people because God loves good stories.” Again, here we are.

But it is this opening account in Genesis One that finds its way into our ears this morning. We read it as a litany because that is how it is put together. There are lines repeated, stanzas enlarged, words like “TOV!” (“good”) which echo again and again. This cannot be a scientific account of the world’s beginning. It is a worship account, a declaration of purpose and intent. Everything begins in God’s creativity. The world and everything in it proceeds from God, who is present but mostly stays hidden.

I have a good friend who calls himself a burned-out Methodist. He doesn’t go to church any more. We were talking one night, and he trusted me enough to confess some doubts about God. “I don’t believe there is a God,” he said. I pushed him a little bit and said, “Where do you think all this came from?” He smiled and said, “It’s just a happy accident, I suppose.”

Well, I knew enough about him that I wasn’t going to push. A hard-edged Sunday School teacher had turned him off in grade school. His mother told him he had to go anyway. Along the way, he ran into people who wielded the Bible as a club, insisting he was wrong and they were right. They told him that he shouldn't think, that he shouldn't honor God with his mind. And now I thought, you know, it takes a lot of courage for someone to tell a Presbyterian preacher that he thought the whole God-thing was manufactured by uptight people who wanted to control others so they could get money out of them.

So I told him about my experiences in biology class. It was during my brief college career in pre-med. We were dissecting lab animals, learning how all the parts worked, memorizing all the terminology, observing all the delicate systems that work together. It was amazing, and I couldn’t believe any of it was an accident. There was such an elaborate design behind it all. It was far above anything I or anybody else could imagine.

But that wasn’t all. During one lab period, a wisecracking classmate pointed at our lab specimen and said, “That little bugger didn’t have much of a life, did he?” It was like I was smacked awake. I mean, what’s the purpose of it all? We could analyze deceased animals and determine how they functioned – but what fascinated me, then and now, is what happens to creatures when they are alive. How is it that they live and flourish? What are they here for? These weren’t the kinds of questions anybody could answer in biology class. Thus began my stirrings to a call to ministry.

I had no interest in convincing my friend of what he didn’t want to believe. But I guess I could invite him to pay a little more attention to world and all its splendor. In fact, I just talked to him the other day. He’s getting ready to head off for a week in the mountains. “There’s a place where the hawks circle,” he said. “I can sit and watch them for hours.”

What’s behind all of this? Genesis says it’s not a What but a Who. God creates it all. Genesis does not try to prove this; it simply starts with God, because everything starts with God.

One of the interesting details about this text is when it may have been written down. It could not have been an eye-witness account, of course. Some scholars listen to the syntax and vocabulary, and suggest it was composed during the Babylonian Exile. That was one of the most disruptive seasons in Israel’s history. The temple of God had been smashed and torn down, the brightest and best of the nation had been deported and enslaved. The faith of the faithful had been splintered.

And a group of Jewish priests countered all the spiritual chaos by stating in a litany, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, and God saw it was good. There was evening and morning, the first day. And God separated the sky from the water, and it was so. There was evening and morning, the second day.” And so on. They countered the chaos by worshiping a God who created everything in an orderly way.

What a remarkable thing to say! Behind all the Babylonian gods was the real God, the God of Israel, the Creator of the whole world and all the worlds we cannot even see. Beyond the disruption of every institution that the Jewish people counted on for hundreds of years, or the shattering of every human relationship that mattered to them, there is the Lord God who rules over everything that he made. Even when the world seems turned upside down, it is still God’s world; it always has been, it always will be.

It all comes from God. The Spirit of God was brooding over the waters, ready to bring everything to life. As the Gospel of John will add, it is Christ the Word of God who is the means through which everything is made. The Word speaks holy wisdom – and it creates the very thing that is spoken.

And the Word keeps creating. It is not finished. There is a Lutheran theologian named Ann Pederson who teaches at a college in South Dakota. She says it is tempting to think like Aristotle that once the world is made, it really is fixed, kind of like a classical composer who writes down a symphony. All the black dots are fixed on paper, right where they need to be, never to be changed. But contemporary physics suggests that this is not quite how the world really is. Dr. Pederson says God is more like a jazz musician, able to create something out of nothing, so it can live and breathe and grow and change.[1] Not so much fixed, as alive!

Creation has a past: the world was created. But the creation has a present: the world is alive. And I’ve noticed the people who speak of creation only in the past tense seem very concerned with control. They want everything fixed and settled. There are rules to follow and standard operating procedures to observe. I know such matters give great comfort to many, many people.

I will simply counter by saying there was a black bear cub loose in Clarks Summit the other day. It was two blocks down the street at the Abington Heights office building, trying to enroll in kindergarten, I think. A living creation doesn’t always stay where people want it to stay - - because it’s alive.

So I’m suggesting that perhaps we Christians lighten up, let the Spirit refresh us, and that we not take this ancient creation litany as a science textbook. It is not a statement to be defended as it is an invitation to praise our Creator, and to pay closer attention to diversity and vitality of life. It’s an invitation to go outside and admire God’s handiwork, as opposed to staying inside and fussing about what gets taught in biology class.

I confess my weariness at good-hearted Christians who fear that they have to defend God from his detractors. God is going to outlive us all, so God is perfectly capable of self-defense. When I hear fearful Christian people insisting that God had to make everything in six twenty-four days, or that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, it saddens me. It is Science and Faith that can co-exist, and they can keep one another honest. Science can observe the “how” while Faith speaks of “why” and “Who.” And all of it really ought to point us to a God who is a lot greater than any one of us can imagine.

To set that in context, I think of a little joke that has made the rounds:  

A man prays and says, “God, what is a billion dollars to you?” God says, “To me, a billion dollars is but a penny.”

The man thinks for a minute, and says, “God, what is a billion years to you?” God replies, “To me, a billion years is but a second.”

The man smiles and says, “Lord, can I have a penny?” God says, “Sure, just a second.”

For my money, it is really arrogant to reduce God to our size, to presume to dictate only how God works, to once again, perhaps inadvertently, put ourselves on the throne at the center of the universe. Sorry, but we really haven’t evolved that much.

No, what we have here in Genesis One is that God chooses to make a world. Perhaps the Creator wants our friendship, perhaps God likes good stories, perhaps God is just really, really generous -- joyfully generous! This is the God who claps the hands and says, “Tov! Tov! Good! Good!” For that is how everything is made, and how it is initially assessed.  “Tov! Tov! Good! Good!”

And this is also the God who is so secure, so settled in his own sovereignty, that God doesn’t need to hover over everything and control it – but rather God is free to spend a day in rest, enjoying the beauty, the intricacy, the interplay. If God can lean back and take a Sabbath, so can we. We can rest in the assurance that this weary world is God’s, that God has loved it since the beginning, and that God is still working to make all things new through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Ann Pederson, God, Creation, and All That Jazz: A Process of Composition and Improvisation (St. Louis, Chalice Press, 2001).

Spirit of Practical Wisdom

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Pentecost

June 8, 2014

William G. Carter

No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Pentecost is a day that a lot of people don’t understand. It doesn’t fit into the tidy categories of American holidays. Walmart and Target can take over Christmas, turning a profit in the name of baby Jesus. Easter cards are available in the greeting card racks, most of them bearing the signs of North American spring rather than the weirdness of resurrection.

 But Pentecost is not easily consumed. The Holy Spirit comes in the clatter of wild wind, the igniting of fire, the speaking of Gospel to every available language. A fractured group of timid fishermen, peasants, and women folk are shaped into preachers, all because the Power of God comes upon them, fills them, and gives them a word to speak.

That’s hard for a lot of people to understand. As one reasonable woman once declared after hearing the Bible account of the first Pentecost, “That’s a spooky story, a bit too mystical and mysterious for me.” I understand the awkwardness she felt.

The apostle Paul had some mystical tendencies of his own, but he didn't talk about them very frequently. He didn’t say much about Pentecost at all. When he spoke of the Holy Spirit, he turned to practical matters. His mysticism made sense, and we have a share of that today.

He is writing to the church in Corinth, a seaport in southern Greece. It was a bustling crossroad of ideas. People landed there from every conceivable corner of the Mediterranean Sea. They brought traditions and notions with them. It was a strategic city for him to launch the Gospel. The wind of Spirit could come upon the people and blow the dandelion seeds of the Gospel around the known world, where it could take root.

Unfortunately the church in Corinth was a mess. It was like no other church you’ve ever known – some people strutting around in arrogance, others breaking into factions. A lot of the people had a superficial view of God, some man was sleeping with his father’s wife, they had a lot of questions about the resurrection, a few people were grandstanding their spiritual super powers, others were gulping down more than their share of the communion wine, and many of them complained about their preacher. I guess it was like every other church.

Paul’s concern in this text is how the Holy Spirit comes into a community of believers and makes it work. Through the preaching of the Gospel, people come to trust in Jesus. It is his Spirit that comes into their midst, entering into their lives. That’s the practical Pentecost. And the fun comes from watching how it works.

I remember the congregations I have known. There was that little Congregational church in central New Jersey. It was never very big, about the same size as the fifty or so people who convened in Corinth. Not very big, but everybody had a role.

• Marv was the greeter; whoever came in that building got a hug from him at the door.
• Marie was his wife; she noticed if somebody looked sad, or in need, or was wearing worn-out clothes, and then slipped alongside to see what they needed.
• Lloyd was the preacher; I couldn’t understand a lot of his sermons, but when he prayed, he carried us into the throne room of God.
• Pat was the volunteer secretary. She insisted she was a volunteer. “If you had to pay me,” she said, “you couldn’t afford me.” And she was an excellent organizer.
• Tony was the high school soccer coach, and he believed everybody who went out for the team should play in the game. He brought that perspective to church, and he was the big encourager.
• Louise was a burned-out, twice-divorced Southern Baptist. She wanted to teach Bible in her home church in Texas, but that bunch of Baptists wouldn’t allow her to do that. So she brought her big zippered Bible to those Congregationalists in New Jersey and taught them all about the love of God.
• Of course, there was Betty. Every church has a Betty! You don’t mess with Betty because she’ll call a spade a spade, and she always speaks the truth.
• And then there was Jack. He was our unofficial referee. He could sniff out all thirty-seven shades of animosity and address them all. If need be, he would sit two opposing congregants in two facing chairs, and say, “So what do we have to do to get the two of you to get along?” Usually Betty was in one of those chairs.

Do you want to believe in Pentecost? Look at how a Christian community forms and how it functions. Pentecost means that God comes into our midst, equipping the followers of Christ to live the Gospel with others and work beside them. The Spirit is not a personalized, privatized, individualized gift; the Spirit creates a community where everybody has something to offer. In the name of Christ, everybody has a gift to share for common good.

Paul was a pastor. He could see this in that unusual combination of personalities and personas that make up any congregation. Individually, any one of those people might click with you or they might drive you crazy. But together – bound together, working together, with no single voice dominating – that was a remarkable gift from God.

So, to the Corinthians, he says the same thing the Spirit says to us: look around!

• Some speak God’s wisdom; that comes from the Spirit within them.
• Others have knowledge to share; it emerges from God our Teacher.
• Some are strong believers who can carry others with them. God gave them that faith.
• Other have ability to heal, restore, make others well, create peace. This is the God of peace at work in them.
• Some work miracles, when the world says miracles are impossible.
• Some speak prophetic truth, able to sort out multiple voices and discern which is God's voice.
• Some are so full of God's presence that it bubbles out of them in ecstasy. Others have the God-given ability to make sense of it all.

These are the gifts of God for the people of God. The whole gathering is equipped by the Holy Spirit to live the Gospel in that place, in that time, with those people. Paul’s list is an incomplete list, of course; no human being can name all that the generous Spirit of God gives to a particular gathering of Christians. There is an economy generated by the Spirit, where God gives his own church everything it needs to do its essential work.

And that leads me to extract two lessons for us before we work to get energized in practical ways. Here’s the first: we have to give up all our comparisons. We have to give up that American notion of envy, of looking over the fence to see what the neighbors have. We do it in our families, but we also do it in every church that I know. It’s the temptation to pay attention to our neighbors in all the wrong kinds of ways. They have a big endowment, they have a great mission outreach, they have a lot of kids. We play those games way too much, usually to evade our own possibilities.

Really, now. Want a big endowment? Give more. Want a better mission outreach? Get out the door. Want more kids around? I’m sure there are tried and true methods for creating more children.

Those kinds of comparisons are the work of Satan, not the work of God. The Tempter whispers, “You can have it all,” and that’s a lie. We can’t have it all, because we don’t have it all. It’s the basic stewardship principle: what we have is what God gives to us. Nothing more than that, nothing less than that. And what God has given to us is really special, even unique. God never says, “You can have it all;” what God says is, “Look at what you have.” So many blessings, in the people that God gathers here and sends into the world.

So the first lesson is give up the comparisons. Take notice of what we have among us to do God’s work.

The second lesson is a line that Paul speaks in another one of his letters. He says, “Don’t quench the Spirit!”[1] That is, don’t splash cold water on the hot fire of God. If God is doing something among you, don’t kill it. If God is creating a new thing among you, don’t chop it off at the knees before it can grow any legs. I say this from 29 years of pastoral experience. I have lost track of how many times, God will stir up some great new ministry opportunity in some church gathering. The time is right, the resources are in place, the green light says, “Go!” - and then somebody kills it.

Listen to a parable from a congregation that I know. In a certain town, a church had a youth worker. He didn’t find a lot of kids from within that aging congregation, but like a pied piper, he began to attract the teens from the neighborhood. He would shoot hoops with them in the church parking lot. He would gather them to play guitars and drums, and then he introduced them to new Christian music. Some of the young 50-year-olds in the church offered to come and help, baking cupcakes, going along as chaperones to retreats at camp, slipping them some money for pizza.

Sadly, the word spread and some of the old timers were concerned. There was leftover pizza in the Ladies; Association refrigerator. One of the basketballs flew through a church window and the Building Committee hollered. The Worship Committee said the kids could come and play guitars in worship sometime, but when they did, most of the congregants sat with folded arms and grumpy faces, refusing to sing along.

It came to pass, quite suddenly, that the official board decided it could not afford its part-time youth minister. The pastor objected, but the board reminded him that they were all older than he was, and if he wanted a full salary, they had to make a change. So they trimmed the budget and let the youth minister go. Two weeks later, one old-timer turned to another at coffee hour and said, “Where did all those teenagers go?” Six years later, the church closed and the building went up for sale. What’s the lesson? Don’t quench the Spirit.

We have to learn to love what God gives us, because it is a gift from God. When God comes in the invisible power of the Holy Spirit, when God energizes us and gives us fresh power and imagination, when God comes in practical ways so that our sons and daughters prophesy, our young people see visions, and our old people dream dreams, we welcome and honor what God is doing among us. That is the practical wisdom of Pentecost.

So in a second, I’m going to ask you to stand up and sit down, maybe a few times. You’ve been sitting too long.

Is there anybody here who believes that God is calling them to:

-          Become a more loving person?  (Could you stand?)

-          Teach our faith to this generation and the next generation?

-          Be the hands of Jesus Christ beyond our walls by offering a meal to somebody who is hungry?

-          Show hospitality by actively welcoming others in the name of God?

-          Offer the consolation of Christ by reaching out to those who lose a loved one to death?

-          Bear the burdens of another person by listening to them when they need you?

-          Make a financial contribution to keep this church’s work vital and healthy?  

-          Volunteer your time and ability to serve on a committee or for some special project?

-          Make a positive difference in the life of child or teenager?

-          Dream dreams and share visions, and help our church move into its own future?

-          Make a joyful noise to the Lord by offering the gift of music? (Stay standing, we’re going to sing.)

These are some of the ways that Pentecost becomes real and practical. There are many, many gifts among us, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of services, but the same Lord who is served. There is a multitude of activities, but the same God who energizes each one. Spirit, Lord, God – one Holy Trinity at work within all of us, for the glory of God and the benefit of God's world.

Happy Practical Pentecost!

(c) William G. Carter

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[1] 1 Thessalonians 5:19

What To Do When You're Grateful

Deuteronomy 5:6-22

May 25, 2014

William G. Carter 

On occasion, I spend time with people who are not Presbyterians. They are pleasant and kind, for the most part, but sometimes they have a few questions.

Last Thursday, for instance, I was surrounded by a room full of Roman Catholics. One of them asked, “What’s your religion like?” Just like yours, was my reply.  Both of us are Christians. We worship the God we meet in Jesus Christ, just like you. She looked at me as if she had never considered that I might be a Christian too.

The man next to her said, “But you don’t have a Pope in your religion. If you don’t have a Pope, who tells you what to do?” I smiled at him and said God. It was his turn to look a bit confused.

The first lady jumped back in. She wanted to know, “Does your religion have a lot of rules?” Ah, she was still struggling with this. For clarification, she added, “Our religion has a lot of rules.” I thought about this for a minute, reflected on where this sermon was probably headed, and took a moment to sum up what I wanted to say.

And then I said, “A religion always seems to have a lot of rules, but Christian faith has the gift of guidance.”

From the somewhat horrified look on her face, I’m not sure she was following me at all, but I told her I was going to put together this sermon and invited her to come hear it. It was her turn to smile. She replied, “Well, that’s against the rules.”

Now I bring this up because a lot of people reduce religion to a list of rules. This is exactly how many people perceive the Ten Commandments. They are heavy. They are difficult to pick up and bulky to carry. For all practical purposes, they are unmovable and they do not budge.

“Thou shalt not…” Eight of the Ten Commandments begin that way. They prohibit behavior. They instruct by telling us what not to do. Sometimes, just the burden of being told “no” has the opposite effect.

I told our puppy, “Pippa, don’t play in the mud.” She said, “Mud? Where’s the mud?” She didn’t know there was mud. Next thing you know, she’s up to her elbows in it.

Rules can have an opposite effect. I remember a painful thing that happened right before a wedding. After the rehearsal, where the minister had bride and groom practice their vows, the groom decided to have one last fling. Next morning, when the bride found out about it, she gave him a left hook, knocked him on his tail, and called the whole thing off. The ushers said to him, “What were you thinking?” And he said, “I guess I got really scared when I heard the minister ask, ‘Will you forsake all others?’”

There’s something very heavy about being told “no.” No idolatry – let me set up something else to worship. No stealing – nobody’s going to see me take this. No false witness – well, don’t let the truth stand in the way of a good story. There’s something very human about the heavy weight of being told “no.”

Even the apostle Paul could admit this. In one of his letters, he says, “I find myself doing the very thing I don’t want to do, and the law indicts me. I would never have learned how to covet, except the Ten Commandments say, ‘thou shalt not covet.’” Don’t covet? Gee, never occurred to me until you said it. Thanks for bringing it up, Moses. Paul says, “The law of God is holy, just, and good...and it kills me.”[1] It kills me.

That was how Martin Luther came to understand the law: it is a huge weight that fell on him. It was a heavy burden that crushed the life out of him. Luther said a good sermon should begin by telling people how bad they are (that’s the law), and then the sermon should conclude by telling people how good God is (that’s the Gospel). First the law crushes us, and then the Gospel announces God’s forgiveness.

And so, one Lutheran theologian, Martin Marty, said, “Nobody should put the Ten Commandments in a public place without putting beside it the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’” Of course, said Marty, somebody is going to say those words sound too religious; as in “we can remember the commandments, but Jesus makes it a bit too Christian.”

In the middle of this conversation, the weight of the is heavy text comes to us. We should take a moment and remember how we felt when we heard the Ten Words of Moses. Anybody feel guilty, remembering past failures? Can you recall the most recent time that you broke one of the commandments?

Or maybe you felt relieved? In a culture where more and more people do their own things, it is comforting to know God has a standard, that God has expectations. In a rather famous commencement speech at Duke University, Ted Koppel declared, “What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions, they are Commandments…the sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments is they codify, in a handful of words, acceptable human behavior.”[2] So, maybe you felt relieved to hear the commandments today.

And yet, I remember that conversation from Thursday night. Popular opinion is that religion is mostly rules, and rules are heavy, and therefore the whole thing should be resisted without getting caught at it. But that is not how the Commandments were first given. Do you remember how the Bible text begins? God says, “I brought you out of Egypt. I brought you out of slavery. I brought you out of the burdens of Pharoah’s brick factory. I brought you out into freedom.” In that freedom, God gives the Ten Commandments.

Here’s what I wanted to tell that woman on Thursday night: when religion is reduced to a list of rules, it begins to die. When faith is merely a heavy burden, it crushes us. The Ten Commandments were never intended to have that effect. No, these are Ten Words of Guidance, given to direct the life of people who know that they are free. God sets us free – and so the Heidelberg Catechism sets them in the context of gratitude. Since God has set you free, therefore . . .

The first reality of Christian faith is that God sets us free in Christ, so the Commandments come as a “therefore.” Work with me for a minute, and let’s see if we can understand how this works.

• God brought you out of slavery. Therefore you don’t need any other gods.
• God brought you out of Egypt with power and might. Therefore you don’t need to worship anybody smaller.
• God set you free in the power of his holy name. Therefore you don’t need to misuse or diminish that name.
• God relieved you from the burdens of Pharoah’s brick factory. Therefore you don’t need to work seven days a week; you can rest from work and pay attention to God.
• God created you through your mom and your dad. Therefore, respect those who gave you birth.
• God gave life to everybody as a gift. Therefore don’t take life from anybody.
• God gives lifelong companions to those who are called to be married. Therefore they don’t have to dismiss the gift.
• God gives you everything you need. Therefore you are free from stealing what isn’t yours.
• God set you free from other people’s opinions of you. Therefore, you are free from distorting the truth about somebody else.
• God provides for every need. Therefore you are free from wanting what other people have.

When it comes to the Ten Commandments, don’t let anybody ever take away that quiet little “therefore.” God gives the commandments to the very people that God brought out of slavery and bondage. Ted Koppel can call them “the summary of acceptable human behavior,” and at the very least, they are.

But according to the Bible, the commandments are not given to everybody, even if everybody would benefit from them. Rather, the commandments of God are given to the people that God sets free. When God first gives the Commandments to the Jews, God says, “You are my treasures; I have brought you out. Therefore, I am giving you the Law, so that you might do the things that Covenant People do.” Don’t let anybody ever take away the “therefore.” That’s what keeps the commandments from becoming a dead religion.

And maybe I should define a dead religion: a dead religion is religion without a God. It’s all the rules without the relationship. Or in the words of one of my teachers, it’s when somebody boils it all down, and all that’s left of a life-giving faith is the stain in the bottom of the cup. Ugh – who wants that?

“You are mine,” says God Almighty. “I brought you out.” God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt – that is Israel’s covenant. And God brought us out of slavery to sin and death, through the work of Jesus Christ – that is the new covenant (or as the page in your Bible puts it, the New Testament).

A covenant is a covenant. God brings Israel out – and now God calls on them to act as free people are to act. God’s freedom belongs together with God’s expectation. belong together. And I think the evidence of human sin is that we make the life of faith more of a burden than it needs to be.

When it comes to the commandments, let me suggest we take out cue from Jesus. For us, he is the foremost interpreter of all the rules that God has given. Maybe you remember the story. Some legalist came and asked him a question about the commandments. “Teacher, which of God’s commandments is the greatest?” This was a question that came up continually. And if you remember, Jesus answered by saying there are two primary commandments, not one. The first is to love God. The second is to love neighbor.

Now, he didn’t say anything new. In the time of Jesus, every Jew already knew it. There were, after all, two stone tablets in Moses’ hands. One tablet taught us to love God. The other tablet taught us to love neighbor.

The first table focused on loving God: no other gods, no other idols, no abuse of God’s name, keep Sabbath to worship God and welcome God into your life. This is how we love God.

The second tablet was clear about loving neighbor: love mom and dad (who are your very first neighbors), don’t take your neighbor’s life, don’t take your neighbor’s property, don’t take your neighbor’s spouse, don’t take your neighbor’s reputation, don’t even desire the neighbor’s stuff. This is how we love our neighbor.

For instance, when we run through a week and stuff it so full that we have no time to enjoy the One who made us, Sabbath-breaking is a violation against love – our love for God. When we spin the truth so that we look good and others look bad, it gets in the way of our love of neighbor. You can go through all the commandments this way, and they begin to offer us some real direction.

Therefore – and please remember the “therefore” – therefore the Ten Commandments are all about love. That’s what they teach us to do. Love God, love neighbor. Remember this first: God’s commandments teach us to love. The God who brought us out in love is the God who expects us to love. And therefore, every gift of life-giving instruction comes from the God who loved us first.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See the discussion in Romans 7:1-25

[2] http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1989/mw19890401stud.html

Under New Management

Galatians 5:22-26

May 21, 2014

William G. Carter 

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

If you are driving down the street, you might notice the sign that says, “Under New Management.” I suppose it is meant to announce a brand new start, a fresh new approach. “Come and visit it us,” the sign outside a restaurant may declare. “We are under new management.”

I don’t know about you, but when I see such a sign, I flinch a little bit: “Under New Management”? I suspect the old management wasn’t working so well. I wonder: will the waiters be better trained this time” Will the chef has stopped dropping cigarette ashes in my omelet? Has somebody told the teenager at the cash register to look up from her iPhone when it’s time to take my credit card?

New management usually takes over for a number of very good reasons. Whoever used to run the place has stepped aside. Someone has determined it is still a viable opportunity. And the new person in charge has made the necessary changes to start over again.

Now, I’m not talking only about a restaurant or a business or any of that. I’m also about our lives. In our scripture passage, Paul is discussing the “new management” that takes over our lives as Christians. There is a shift from being self-directed to Spirit-filled. It is a move from belonging only to ourselves, or belonging to the devil, to belonging to God and all that God loves.

Paul says this is the power of the Gospel. It frees us. Faith comes with liberation. We don’t have to be the person we were, captive to our natural whims, a slave to our own compulsions. Faith in Jesus sets us free. Paul says our old self is “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). In its place there is a New Creation. The Risen Christ lives in us.

Every once in a while, we meet a person who has changed dramatically, for the good. Something has happened in them, perhaps quickly, perhaps over a long period of time. We knew what they were like, but now they are different.

I think of a woman from my high school class. Around the time of graduation, she didn’t have any plans. Penny seemed to coast along, doing whatever her friends suggested that she do. She was nice enough, but not particularly focused. When we met again some thirty years later, she was transformed. There was a sparkle in her eye. She bubbled confidence. She was clear about her life and her values. “What are you doing?” I asked. She is a hospice counselor. She gives her life every day to people who need her, and it never wears her down.

I wondered out loud, how is that possible? And she began to speak of how she prays, how she reads the scripture slowly every day, how her walk with God opens her to fresh insight and deeper hope. I told her she wasn’t the same person that I remembered from years ago in school. She said, “I certainly hope not.”

This is a glimpse of what faith in Jesus Christ can do to us. It replaces the old management with something new. In this letter to the Galatians, Paul’s word for the old management is “sarx.” It’s a word that means “the flesh.” What he’s talking about are the natural inclinations of every wild animal, the tendency to do whatever we want, to take what others have, to stir up fights, to live without any boundaries. Paul has already given a grim recital of what this looks like: jealousy, quarreling, breaking into factions, giving into our impulses, and so forth and so on. That’s what he calls “the flesh” (5:19-21). It was the old management that was running the place into the ground. And there is another way. Thanks be to God, there is another way.

When Paul writes to these Gentile Christians in Turkey, he gives them a few lists. Here is how to treat people in your household, he says. Then he gives them a list of what destructive behavior looks like. And then, in the text for today, he presents a list of how you know someone is under the New Management of God’s Spirit.

So Paul gives us a list. When he writes to these Gentile people in Turkey, he loves to make his lists. Here is how the Christian people in your household ought to treat one another, he will say. Or here are the destructive behaviors that get us in trouble, and then he presents his list. In our text, he gives another kind of list, a list of how you know someone is under the New Management of God’s Spirit.

One day this week, a volunteer by the name of Jack stood in the door frame of my study. We were chatting about the Joyful Noise program that he is co-leading with our children right now. Jack said, “You know, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is difficult to teach to little kids.” I smiled and thought of a couple texts that I hope they don’t have time to cover.[1]

But it occurred to me that every child can perceive when a person has God at the center of their lives. How do you know God got “into” somebody? By what they are full of . . . and so Paul gives his list:

            Love, joy, peace;

            Patience, kindness, generosity;

            Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Do you notice? We know what each word means. There is no need to look them up – love, patience, gentleness, we know what they are. And we know they are not specifically Christian words. When the Buddhist knocks on my door and speaks of peace, I resonate with her. When the Jew speaks of kindness, I nod in agreement. Anybody can be filled with peace or act with kindness, for God creates all of us with that potential.

What makes this a specifically Christian package is that these attributes are all embodied in Jesus. Everything we know about him suggests love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is how he is, and what he models for us. The true Christians are Christ-like. It is a supernatural transformation. I am talking about the people who are so full of the same Spirit that fills the Christ that they begin to resemble the Lord that they serve.

How remarkable that we should consider such character traits on the day we ordain our elders and deacons! Those who lead the Lord’s people should resemble the Lord they serve. And how will we recognize them?

• Love is the ability to act for the benefit of others
• Joy is the engine that never runs out of fuel.
• Peace is the harmony that creates harmony, within and between.
• Patience takes the long view of God’s eternal kingdom.
• Kindness confronts the human tendency to be cruel.
• Generosity counters the natural inclination to be selfish.
• Faithfulness is the commitment to endure no matter what.
• Gentleness is the velvet glove on the iron hand.
• Self-control is the discipline to make room for God’s direction.

This is what comes if we welcome God to fill our hearts and guide our lives. The world doesn’t need any more heartless bureaucrats, hostile managers, or passive-aggressive waitresses. We don’t need any more church leaders that are full of themselves, much less full of their own opinions. What God’s people need are servants who are full of God, ordinary people who are so full of God’s Spirit that they begin to resemble Jesus. They open us to the possibility that there is another way to live. Their lives reveal that God’s dominion is at hand.

The weary old world can’t always understand this. To use the apostle Paul’s word, the world runs by “sarx” – that is, the natural inclinations of the flesh. It is evident in so many ways, but perhaps the most profound way is how we compete with one another. We interrupt others when they talk. We scoot around a slowpoke to beat him to the checkout line. I think of that lady in Texas who planned to bump off a middle school cheerleader so her daughter could make the squad. That’s as worldly as a tiger ripping apart a wounded zebra. That’s the way of the world. But there is another way, the way of God.

Years ago, the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen took a teaching job at Notre Dame. He was hired as a professor in a brand-new psychology department. He enjoyed the work, loved the students, but there was one thing that caused him to grumble: it was the university’s obsession with football. He didn’t have a problem with the sport, but he noticed that, in South Bend, at least, the obsession could be more important than everything else. What’s that all about? And how does it square with living a holy and compassionate life in the world?

If we live in Christ, he said, “It is not excelling but serving that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation. Compassion - to be with others when and where they suffer - is God’s way to justice and peace among people. Is this possible? Yes, it is, but only when we dare to live with the radical faith that we do not have to compete for love, but that love is freely given to us by the One who calls us to compassion.”[2]

Do you remember the list?

            Love, joy, peace;

            Patience, kindness, generosity;

            Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

These are the signs that God is at work in our lives. These are the gifts that increase in our souls as the Spirit of God directs our lives. And needless to say, these are the blessings that you might offer to the world.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Galatians 1:6-9, 3:1, 5:12, to name a few.

[2] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, and Douglas A. Morrison. Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (New York: Image Books – Doubleday, 1983).

He Bore Our Sins

1 Peter 2:19-25

Easter 4

May 11, 2014

William G. Carter

For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

Tuesday was a beautiful morning at Antietam National Battlefield. The sky was bright blue, the rolling farmland was a carpet of spring green. John Conklin suggested I should stop by, if ever in the area. Tuesday morning, I realized I was very close. With a little time on my hands, I stopped by.

Most of our Civil War battlefields are now quiet spaces. Well preserved, hauntingly quiet. Standing at the ridge by the visitor’s center, I looked toward the old German church, imagining McClellan’s army coming up on Robert E. Lee. I recalled Matthew Brady’s early photographs of dying soldiers on the fields of Antietam. 23,000 people died in the one-day Battle of Antietam. September 17, 1862 was the bloodiest single day in United States history.

If you have visited these battlefields as I have, you wonder about the blood and the massacre. On a beautiful spring day, you wonder what the violence accomplished. In 1862, Antietam did not end the war. The leaders of both sides did not recoil from the horror and say, “That’s it. All of us have had enough. No more violence ever again.” Oh no. The Civil War went on for two and a half more years. Violence does not end all violence.

I was thinking about this sermon as I wandered around the battlefield. Our text reminds us of Good Friday and the death of Jesus. That was another brutal day. Sometimes I think we have spruced up the crucifixion, much like we have tidied up a Civil War battlefield.

Holy Week was not that long ago. I recall the grim faces at our last men’s Bible study. We were studying the account in the Gospel of John, where the Jewish religious leaders asked the Roman soldiers to speed up the executions so they could get on with their Passover celebrations. The men in our group turned pale as we read of soldiers breaking the legs of the crucified men so they could suffocate sooner. The cross was a horrible way to die, brutal and violent.

In today’s text, an early church leader turns to the cross for a moral lesson. “Look to the cross,” he says. “Jesus did not return abuse for the abuse he suffered. When the Lord suffered, he could have retaliated but he did not. Instead he trusted himself to the God who judges every person.” All the time, in the words of the African American spiritual, “He never said a mumbalin’ word.”

Peter was speaking to a congregation of Christians who are suffering. They knew first-hand that those who follow Jesus have a tough time in the world. They can be mistreated for doing the right thing, maligned for setting God’s ways as their highest pursuit. This was especially true for the primary audience addressed by Peter. They were house servants, many of them domestic slaves. They were bound to serve earthly masters, but as Christians they had a higher Master. And it is God in Christ who determines the Christian’s behavior; it is not our situation in life.

It is difficult to stay clear about that. With my hands shading my eyes, I looked toward Antietam Creek. The water ran thick red on that day in 1862. Sharpshooters stood on the ridges above, picking off scores of enemies trying to forge the stream. 23,000 men died in a single day. We remember three men dying on crosses outside of Jerusalem. One was more than enough.

The writer of our Bible text is reflecting on that single death. What does it mean? For a group of downtrodden Christians, the violent death of Jesus means that we must refrain from perpetuating the violence. Jesus taught as much: “You are not,” he said, “to love the neighbor and hate the enemy, speak to the friendly but not the unfriendly, be generous to the generous but withhold from the selfish. No, God acts out of God’s own nature, never reacting, but sending sun and rain to both the just and unjust.”[1] God loves all, even if they do not deserve it.

Here is one of the many things that the New Testament says about on the death of Jesus. What does this mean? “Christ suffered for you,” he declares. There is something freeing about this, something profoundly liberating. Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness.” Then he reaches back into the Jewish scriptures to find an affirmation from the prophet Isaiah, “By his wounds you have been healed.”

It is intriguing that after President Lincoln heard about the violence at Antietam, he regarded the Civil War differently. It was about more than states rights, and whether or not the southern states could do whatever they wanted. It was also about freeing those who were enslaved. Four days after the gunfire stopped in Antietam, Lincoln announced he would issue his Emancipation Proclamation as of January 1863. All slaves in rebellious states would be forever free.

So I’ve been thinking about how all of this holds together. What amount of self-sacrifice is necessary to provide freedom for others? Not merely to exert control over the rebellious tribes but to create freedom – and finally reconciliation? These are more than Civil War questions from 152 years ago. They are matters of the greater gospel, begun on a cross in 30 A.D.

We say a lot of things about the cross – “Jesus died for our sins,” for instance, even though our sins continue. Or another New Testament writer declares, “Christ has broken down the wall of hostility between us . . . through the cross.”[2] But there is still great hostility in the air among a lot of people; I observe, in some corners, we could make the case that the Civil War may not be over yet, and it’s still Blue against Gray.

So in these days after Easter, when we reflect on the cross, we see how far God will go to bring violent people into peace. God cannot compel warring people to stop their war, not without obliterating all of them. But here is what God will do: with all vulnerability, God will step onto the middle of the battlefield and take all the bullets – all the anger, all the hostility – into his own body. God takes all of it on the cross, in order to take it all away . . . provided we let it all go.

That’s the human struggle, isn’t it? I saw war in the eyes of the lady who cut me off on the highway yesterday, then she glared at me as if it was my fault. Sorry, not that time. But I have to let it go.

I saw it on the sign outside the visitor’s center at Antietam. In official lettering, it declared that guns and firearms are not welcome at a battlefield memorial. Just let the irony of that sink in. Then ask: why would anybody take guns and firearms to a battle that is already over?

But my favorite glimpse came when I pulled off to a little spot to write a few notes about Antietam, and I discovered where I was. There it was - a monument to Clara Barton. I didn’t know for what she did on that battlefield. A forty-year old clerk in Washington’s patent office, she collected medical supplies and food to deliver to the soldiers. Her father had taught her that Christians care for those in need. She persisted with army officials until she received permission in August 1862 to take humanitarian supplies to the front lines.

One month later on the field of Antietam, she got busy, bandaging the wounded, feeding the hungry, showing compassion regardless of what side of the line anybody fought. They called her “the Angel of the Battlefield.” A few years after that, she organized the American Red Cross.

She did this willingly: she went to the battlefield to bind up wounds. She offered compassion to all soldiers regardless of whether they wore blue or gray. She is still remembered for her mercy at a level far beyond the soldiers or their generals. Through her deeds, she pointed us beyond the war to another way of living. And just to score the point: we would never have known about her if she hadn't entered the war.

These are clues to the work accomplished by Jesus on the cross. He entered the battle between heaven and earth, putting himself squarely on the battlefield of rebellious Confederates and warlike Yankees. And he gave himself that all people ultimately might be healed.

  

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Fred B. Craddock, 1 Peter, Westminster Bible Commentary, p. 50

[2] Ephesians 2:14-16